Writing on open financial systems, monetary infrastructure, and social coordination.https://awkaishin.com/https://awkaishin.com/prying/where-the-yield-goes/https://awkaishin.com/prying/where-the-yield-goes/A law bans stablecoin issuers from paying you interest on the Treasury bills backing your dollar. Follow that interest through five structures to see where it actually lands, and how an industry that set out to build a dollar needing no bank ended up here.Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/why-defi-still-matters/https://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/why-defi-still-matters/The cost and speed of moving value has dropped by over 100x in a few years. What that means for who owns the yield on your money, and why transparency is DeFi's real structural advantage over TradFi.Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/identifying-curators-safeguarding-or-gatekeeping-defi/https://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/identifying-curators-safeguarding-or-gatekeeping-defi/Should Curators be required to disclose their real identities, or does DeFi's pseudonymity offer a path to accountability TradFi can't match? Weighing both sides, and a third option: capital at stake.Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/curators-keeping-the-kingmakers-accountable/https://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/curators-keeping-the-kingmakers-accountable/Curator-managed TVL has more than tripled as depositors prioritise convenience over decentralisation. What that shift means for accountability, risk, and DeFi's permissionless culture.Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/the-arb-defi-playbook/https://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/the-arb-defi-playbook/ARB has no native yield, so DeFi has to manufacture one. Lending, carry trades, leveraged loops, market making, and staking, mapped against the governance token of one of the largest layer 2s.Tue, 06 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/the-reth-defi-playbook/https://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/the-reth-defi-playbook/rETH always appreciates relative to ETH, which opens up lending, carry trades, leveraged yields, fixed yields, and market making. A practical map of where the risk-adjusted opportunities actually sit.Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/crypto-and-private-property/https://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/crypto-and-private-property/If your assets could be arbitrarily confiscated, would you still invest the resources to improve it? If private property rights were .Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/mastering-restaking-yields/https://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/mastering-restaking-yields/Introduction Restaking has proven itself to be a core DeFi narrative in 2024 largely due to how it has supercharged yields on .Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/impermanent-loss/https://awkaishin.com/learning/impermanent-loss/Overview Impermanent loss refers to a temporary unrealized loss of capital value that arises when providing liquidity to AMM .Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/mastering-leverage-shorts/https://awkaishin.com/learning/mastering-leverage-shorts/🐻 Bearish on a token you’ve just discovered? Factor’s Leverage strategies enable you to turn any token’s potential upside .Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/mastering-leverage-longs/https://awkaishin.com/learning/mastering-leverage-longs/🐂 Bullish on a token you’ve just discovered? Factor’s Leverage strategies enable you to turn any token’s potential upside or downside into amplified .Thu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/concentrated-liquidity/https://awkaishin.com/learning/concentrated-liquidity/How concentrated liquidity lets LPs allocate capital to custom price ranges, and why that made automated market making dramatically more capital efficient.Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/automated-market-makers-explained/https://awkaishin.com/learning/automated-market-makers-explained/Overview Per its namesake, AMM (Automated Market Maker) decentralized exchanges maintains a liquidity pool of assets against which trades can be made .Sun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/babylon-btc-staking/https://awkaishin.com/learning/babylon-btc-staking/Disclaimer: The original post can be found on the RockX blog and has been reposted here purely for educational purposes. RockX .Wed, 24 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/amms-vs-limit-orders/https://awkaishin.com/learning/amms-vs-limit-orders/You’ve probably heard about the above crypto-billionaire dream story from one of your very inspired friends or family members getting into crypto. It’s .Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/dex-aggregators/https://awkaishin.com/learning/dex-aggregators/Societies are created and destroyed on the back of liquidity flows. A society with a healthy and functioning liquidity backbone enables .Tue, 05 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/amm-zaps/https://awkaishin.com/learning/amm-zaps/How zaps let liquidity providers add or remove concentrated liquidity in a single transaction, and what happens under the hood.Fri, 17 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-choosing-best-fee-tier-walkthrough/https://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-choosing-best-fee-tier-walkthrough/Maximize your DeFi Liquidity Provider yields by choosing the best fee tier for your AMM position. A guide to optimizing trading fees.Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-practical-look-best-fee-tier/https://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-practical-look-best-fee-tier/What is the best fee tier when providing liquidity to DEX AMMs? 4 token pairs, 3 fee tiers each, which position had the best real returns?.Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-how-fee-tiers-make-or-break-returns/https://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-how-fee-tiers-make-or-break-returns/Maximize your liquidity provider yields by choosing the AMM pool with the best fee tier. Understanding DEX trading fee market dynamics.Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/telegram-trading-bots/https://awkaishin.com/learning/telegram-trading-bots/Why Telegram became the interface of choice for trading bots, and how the sector grew into a $200M+ market.Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-choosing-best-range-flow-chart/https://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-choosing-best-range-flow-chart/Demystifying Range Selection Through Simple Steps Having previously covered the concepts as well as practical effects of position range choices on LP returns, this post summarizes all the learnings into an easily accessible flow chart. Thro.Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-choosing-best-range-part-2/https://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-choosing-best-range-part-2/A Practical Look At Selecting Price Ranges A quick glance of the price range considerations covered in the first half of this series highlights the actual complexity hiding behind such a simple choice. To help bring these concepts to life,.Mon, 24 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-choosing-best-range-part-1/https://awkaishin.com/learning/kyberswap-choosing-best-range-part-1/How does concentrated liquidity range affect your DeFi yields? What are the risks when providing liquidity to DEXs?.Mon, 17 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/airdrops-token-distribution/https://awkaishin.com/learning/airdrops-token-distribution/What airdrops are, why protocols use them to bootstrap token distribution, and how to evaluate whether one is worth pursuing.Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/defi-value-flows/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/defi-value-flows/This article builds upon the technological concepts covered in DeFi Ecosystem: Primitives and Technology Stack by providing an .Fri, 06 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-web3-stack-a-conceptual-framework/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-web3-stack-a-conceptual-framework/As the Web3 space continues to grow, contextualising the various technologies has become an increasingly demanding task. In this series of articles, we will .Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-web3-stack-a-macro-view/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-web3-stack-a-macro-view/As the Web3 space continues to grow, contextualising the various technologies has become an increasingly demanding task. In this series of articles, we will start with a .Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-web3-stack-assets/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-web3-stack-assets/As the Web3 space continues to grow, contextualising the various technologies has become an increasingly demanding task. In this series of articles, we will start with a high .Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-web3-stack-transaction-settlement/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-web3-stack-transaction-settlement/As the Web3 space continues to grow, contextualising the various technologies has become an increasingly demanding task. In this series of articles, we will .Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/defi-primitives-and-technology-stack/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/defi-primitives-and-technology-stack/The DeFi ecosystem has been bursting with innovation as the community continues to build new primitives, assets, and rails which promises greater value .Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/issuing-and-verifying-ethereum-dids/https://awkaishin.com/learning/issuing-and-verifying-ethereum-dids/As we move towards a more user-centric digital identity infrastructure, one of the fundamental issues we face is the verifiability and portability of .Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/signing-and-verifying-hashed-messages/https://awkaishin.com/learning/signing-and-verifying-hashed-messages/One exciting feature of Ethereum is the ability to prove consent directly between parties. In other words, you can easily validate that someone agreed .Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/erc721-ipfs-decentralised-nfts/https://awkaishin.com/learning/erc721-ipfs-decentralised-nfts/While NFTs are a great tool for uniquely identifying digital assets and ownership, storing data on the blockchain comes .Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/stablesats-perpetual-inverse-swaps/https://awkaishin.com/learning/stablesats-perpetual-inverse-swaps/Banking Platform Galoy Raises $4M for Bitcoin-Backed Synthetic Dollar George Kaloudis is a research analyst for CoinDesk Research. Galoy .Wed, 07 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/project-guardian-singapore-cedefi/https://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/project-guardian-singapore-cedefi/MAS Partners the Industry to Pilot Use Cases in Digital Assets Singapore, 31 May 2022...The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) .Thu, 01 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/project-orchid-singapore-retail-cbdcs/https://awkaishin.com/writing/from-the-inside/project-orchid-singapore-retail-cbdcs/Much like the national flower representing Singapore’s spirit, Project Orchid is the country’s multi-phase approach to creating a vibrant and .Thu, 01 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/the-politics-of-web3/https://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/the-politics-of-web3/All technology is inherently political. Web3 is divisive precisely because it reconfigures power in favour of users, and the self-preservation tradeoff between individuals and institutions is being renegotiated.Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/self-custody-the-power-of-ownership/https://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/self-custody-the-power-of-ownership/With the fallout of FTX still ongoing, one of the fundamental questions that have been brought to the fore again is self-custody: Not Your Keys, Not Your .Fri, 18 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/proving-consent-on-ethereum/https://awkaishin.com/learning/proving-consent-on-ethereum/The Veramo team has been hard at work building the foundations for decentralised identity on Ethereum. Through their ethr-did-registry .Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/signing-and-verifying-ethereum-messages/https://awkaishin.com/learning/signing-and-verifying-ethereum-messages/One exciting feature of Ethereum is the ability to prove consent directly between parties. In other words, you can easily validate that someone agreed to .Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/withdrawing-dormant-eth-from-etherdelta/https://awkaishin.com/learning/withdrawing-dormant-eth-from-etherdelta/I was previously notified by a good samaritan (012.tez) that I had some ETH which was locked in the EtherDelta contract since I last interacted with it years .Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/ethereum-logs-hands-on-with-ethers-js/https://awkaishin.com/learning/ethereum-logs-hands-on-with-ethers-js/While developing on Ethereum, one of the key data types which you will inevitably comes across are smart contract events. Events provide a way for a smart .Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/accountability-not-decentralisation/https://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/accountability-not-decentralisation/One of the main aspects of blockchain technology which everyone is excited about revolves around the technology’s ability to create and maintain trustless .Thu, 13 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/art-of-the-trade-tradfi-vs-defi/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/art-of-the-trade-tradfi-vs-defi/Perspectives are what define our view of the world. Consequently, each one of us approaches the world through the many personalized looking glasses which .Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/crypto-passive-income-strategies/https://awkaishin.com/learning/crypto-passive-income-strategies/With inflation exploding in the post-covid era, the sad truth is that the people who will be hardest hit are those who can least afford .Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/did-decentralised-identitys-starting-line/https://awkaishin.com/learning/did-decentralised-identitys-starting-line/The first step towards decentralised identity is uniquely identifying an individual. Almost all the identity frameworks which we use today rely on some .Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/verifiable-credentials/https://awkaishin.com/learning/verifiable-credentials/Societies are built on trust, be it directly through knowing the person or indirectly through a person’s reputation. As communities .Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/getting-your-ethereum-email-with-ens/https://awkaishin.com/learning/getting-your-ethereum-email-with-ens/One of the best things that you can do now if you own an ENS domain is send and receive emails from that domain! I recently got my own ENS domain at .Wed, 05 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/ens-simplifying-web3-identity/https://awkaishin.com/learning/ens-simplifying-web3-identity/One major hurdle towards mass adoption in Web3 is the use of address hashes as a means of coordination. For example, whenever a user sends funds or .Tue, 04 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/connecting-metamask-local-hardhat-network/https://awkaishin.com/learning/connecting-metamask-local-hardhat-network/Metamask is an essential tool in the Ethereum space as it creates a user-friendly interface for interacting with the blockchain. For developers, being .Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/signing-in-with-ethereum/https://awkaishin.com/learning/signing-in-with-ethereum/With public key cryptography underlying Web3, one of the novel use cases which has risen is the ability to verify “who you say you are” without .Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/connect-metamask-with-ethers-js/https://awkaishin.com/learning/connect-metamask-with-ethers-js/The Ethers.js library enables us to easily interact with the Ethereum blockchain using Javascript. As such, it significantly speeds up the development process for web .Tue, 27 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/connecting-metamask-to-express-web-app/https://awkaishin.com/learning/connecting-metamask-to-express-web-app/Without coding experience, web applications are the main way through which majority of users will interact with the blockchain. This is .Tue, 27 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/futarchy-and-liquid-democracy/https://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/futarchy-and-liquid-democracy/Before we even begin, those that have been following the media circus which is the world news would rightly point out that the majority of .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/hardforks-putting-a-price-on-free-will/https://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/hardforks-putting-a-price-on-free-will/How much individual freedom are you willing to give up for the benefit of the group? How about if with every rule that you didn’t like .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/trusted-third-parties-conflicts-of-interest/https://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/trusted-third-parties-conflicts-of-interest/Binge watching Stranger Things over the weekend, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the thrills of biking through the .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/why-privacy-is-key-to-personal-growth/https://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/why-privacy-is-key-to-personal-growth/“Sharing all destroys personality like a nude beach destroys eroticism.” — Becky Blanton With that thought in mind (and hopefully with not too many .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/with-great-power-comes-greater-transparency/https://awkaishin.com/writing/power-and-coordination/with-great-power-comes-greater-transparency/Having explored how privacy is key to our personal development here, it is also vital to understand how privacy and power are inseparable in our modern day .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/systems-and-society/has-the-internet-overcomplicated-things/https://awkaishin.com/writing/systems-and-society/has-the-internet-overcomplicated-things/Congratulations internet (or more specifically, the web as we know it), you’ve officially turned 27 this month which means .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/systems-and-society/who-is-responsible-for-our-digital-future/https://awkaishin.com/writing/systems-and-society/who-is-responsible-for-our-digital-future/The digital future trades vague rights for concrete convenience. Institutions carry real responsibility, but placing all of it with them declares the rest of us helpless. The line has to be drawn from both sides.Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/decentralised-identity-the-way-forward/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/decentralised-identity-the-way-forward/With the rise of the internet, we have all gotten used to managing our digital identities through username and passwords. Think of all the websites which you .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/mev-the-scalpers-of-web3/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/mev-the-scalpers-of-web3/Anywhere there is money to be made, scalpers will come to play. It is of no surprise that one of the acronyms which have popped up in the DeFi space recently is MEV: Miner .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/oracles-how-blockchains-perceive-the-world/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/oracles-how-blockchains-perceive-the-world/“Corgito, ergo sum (I think therefore I am)” — Descartes Short of triggering an existential crisis, the issue of determining how blockchains perceive .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/reclaiming-our-identities/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/reclaiming-our-identities/From our very first breath, we are all given an identity. Our name allows those around us to know which family are we from and therefore .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-future-of-stablecoins/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/the-future-of-stablecoins/What stablecoins are actually stable against, why the US dollar peg dominates, and how fiat-backed, crypto-backed, and algorithmic designs each trade off trust, capital efficiency, and censorship resistance.Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/we-are-more-than-our-finances/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-alternative-stack/we-are-more-than-our-finances/Mainstream media has always been enamoured by the Web3 space due to the the multi-million dollar ape images and multi-billion dollar crashes .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-broken-system/crypto-volatility-phantom-chicken-and-egg/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-broken-system/crypto-volatility-phantom-chicken-and-egg/Price volatility was the defining feature that garnered cryptocurrencies attention and made Bitcoin a mainstream name. It was only when the .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-broken-system/redefining-our-valuation-of-the-world/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-broken-system/redefining-our-valuation-of-the-world/It is hard to imagine a world without money given the current influence it enjoys now but .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-broken-system/the-scarcity-problem/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-broken-system/the-scarcity-problem/The scarcity argument groups all cryptocurrencies into a single basket. Intrinsic value depends on what a cryptocurrency is actually designed to do: store value, move value, or grant participation in a network.Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/writing/the-broken-system/why-the-media-loves-cryptocurrencies/https://awkaishin.com/writing/the-broken-system/why-the-media-loves-cryptocurrencies/It’s simple right? It’s all about the money. That is true but I believe it goes much deeper than that as the allure of cryptocurrencies is .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/dex-supercharging-stablecoin-diversity/https://awkaishin.com/learning/dex-supercharging-stablecoin-diversity/Money is only as useful as what it enables you to do. Money would have no value if it couldn’t be exchanged for something that .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/erc20-using-hardhat-guide/https://awkaishin.com/learning/erc20-using-hardhat-guide/The crypto development environment is always evolving at a breakneck speed so what better time for a refresher with the upcoming Ethereum merge. To .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://awkaishin.com/learning/erc721-using-hardhat-guide/https://awkaishin.com/learning/erc721-using-hardhat-guide/The ERC721 standard is used for representing ownership of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Each NFT is unique and is therefore complements use .Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT